Media commentary from a recovering journalist.

July 24, 2012

This isn’t something the traditional digital advertising industry wants to hear (and yes, there is such a thing as “traditional” digital advertising.) Clicks equal cash goes the maxim, though those selling clicks are the ones who make the real cash – not necessarily the companies trying to get customers to click on their ads.

The evidence is everywhere. A recent study published in AdAge found virtually no relationship between a click and an actual conversion; time spent viewing or hovering over the ads actually scored better.

Insisting that clicks on ads equals campaign success is flawed logic at best. Said the CEO of the company that commissioned the aforementioned study: “My key takeaway is that optimizing to viewable impressions or hover time is a better proxy for a brand advertiser than a click-through rate.”

True, however there is a larger trend here than all direct marketers turning into brand advertisers (itself a scary thought.) The real impact, and the key trend to watch, is all about time.

Capturing Your “Share of Time”
In a way, marketing has always been about time. For decades there wasn’t much of a need to measure time, since there were so few media options. The focus was on audience numbers, whether than audience spent a few minutes or a few hours with your programming.

No longer. We now have infinite choices and channels; media is unbundled and fragmented. With so much choice the “impression” is now meaningless – it’s not a true indicator of brand recall or connection.

All that matters is time. And time is what we need to measure. Forget the click – today, it’s all about the clock.

The path to earning greater “share of time” online is through storytelling and engagement that taps into people’s emotions. This is a large reason why video – especially short-form and serialized stories – continues to expand. As a recent Fast Company article noted, people are spending at least 22 hours a month watching online video, a number from April that’s certainly even higher now and will continue to rise.

Good marketing is good storytelling, and stories capture people’s attention – and their time – far better than a static direct-response banner ad. Stories that go beyond one-way interaction and tap into more immersive and participatory transmedia, such as USA Networks’ “Sights Unseen” adventure, not only capture time but bring people into a brand experience that traditional online marketing tactics simply could never hope to achieve.

Fish where the fish are, the saying goes – this too is about time. Print, radio and TV use is declining while Internet and mobile steadily rise. More people today go online via mobile devices than their PCs.

Time is about place as well as engagement. It’s about earning attention and trust, not expecting it. And most of all, it’s about accepting that the audience has moved on even if your marketing is still stuck in the past.

Watch the clock, not the click. Spend your time measuring what matters.

July 21, 2012

“If we don’t meet again, your final assignment from me is perhaps the most important lesson you will learn in life. Go to your mother, father, brother and sisters, and tell them with all your heart how much you love them. And tell them you know how much they love you too. Go out of your way to make good memories…at some point these memories may be all you have left. May God bless you all, Bryan.”

Professor Bryan Cloyd’s e-mail to his students. Cloyd’s daughter, Austin, died in the April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech shootings.

Virginia Tech, Columbine, Aurora. There are so many more, of course, so many we can't remember despite each time promising ourselves we will never forget.

There will be a time to talk about news and social media again. There will be time to reflect on key moments, such as when a selfless teen turned Reddit into the world's most important news channel during the first hours of the Aurora, Colo., theater shooting that left 12 people dead and many more injured, some permanently.

For now, we just need to listen. We always have and never really do, but I hope against hope that this time it will stick.

I will say this about the suspected killer: As many of you know I have some experience talking to capital murderers, and the question I'm asked the most is what makes them into these monsters. Are they all poor, are they mentally ill, are they all on drugs?

The answer is yes, and no, and everything else. The common thread, if there is one, is that they are far more like us than not. They are friends, neighbors, family. They are a poor mentally ill kid from Kansas City, Mo., and they are an upper-middle class neuroscience student from San Diego, Calif., who bought a movie ticket and brought hell to a Colorado town.

Everything else I want to say I've already said in the below post from just after the Virginia Tech shootings. I'm reposting here in its entirety because I don't want to forget, and neither should any of us.

Now, Hear This (published April 19, 2007)

An elementary school student walked into his classroom, sat at his desk, pulled a loaded gun from his backpack – and blew his own face off.

This was almost 20 years ago in Jefferson City, Missouri. It was my first story on my first day as a reporter for United Press International. I still remember calling in the copy from a nearby pay phone, the crime scene and the students. I remember thinking how could this happen, why did it happen, and would it happen again.

Twenty years later, all that’s changed is the technology. News moves faster, guns shoot better. But tragedy is timeless.

You don’t need me to go on about the Hokie Horror that devastated Virginia Tech and froze the country in disbelief; we have Anderson Cooper for that.

I’ll just say this: It took five syllables and about a week for Don Imus to lose his talk radio job. Cho Seung-Hui gives us more than two years of warnings via teachers and students, spends time in a mental facility where he’s deemed a menace to society, and we don’t hear a damn thing.

July 06, 2012

ALTHOUGH I CAN'T TRACE THE ORIGIN with any certainty, I’m nevertheless pretty sure that the word “content” was first used by a marketer, not a by a journalist.

Journalists are in the business of stories. Always have been – and despite the 24/7 streams of info-snacks and feeds forced through ever-congested virtual pipes, they always will be.

So it should come as no surprise that a recent global study of journalists found that journalists don’t want “pre-packaged” news such as press releases, and instead are “looking for variety in the kinds of stories brands talk about and the way they are told. And they expect brands to be properly engaged with the relevant social networks – not a box-ticking exercise driven by the PR department, but a genuine engagement at all levels of the business.”

In other words, stop with the “content.” Even the word “content” is cold, distant. Content is artificial intelligence. Content fills the feed but leaves you hungry.

Stories, however, are emotional. Stories are history personified. Technology may be the heart of social media, the muscle that keeps it moving, but stories are its soul.

Journalists tell stories and want to be told stories. According to the study, they also want brands to “deploy a full range of storytelling assets – brand stories must be supported by videos, images, infographics.”

It’s also critical that the story be told consistently across platforms and social channels – media fragmentation demands clear narrative so the story doesn’t get lost or misinterpreted like a bad game of “telephone.” These narratives can and should vary based on the channels and makeup of the audience, but ultimately they need to be connected to a larger central theme.

With so much noise disguised as news, journalists want to hear from trusted sources and be engaged in real dialogue with real people. Social media gives brands a perfect opportunity to earn that trust – and if brands are ready, journalists are listening.